Sometimes everything happens at once. Today I went to the PO to pick up a package got THREE, including all 3 spindles I ordered last week. So I am now the proud owner of a Kundert spindle which is a variation on the "A" design shown at left in different woods (walnut as base, with cherry, yellowheart & purple heart stripes), and 2 Bosworths, a mini and a totally adorable featherweight in purpleheart. I also picked up a nostepinne and a box of fabric from Keepsake quilting. The fabric is to fuel my quiltmaking desire so I get off my bum and actually work on it rather than just talk about it. Aside from making borders and separating strips for the quilt whose blocks are already pieced, I still want to make a Grandmother's flower garden, which would almost certainly have to be pieced by hand although I have no qualms about paying somebody else to do the actual quilting. I loathe the quilting process, which is why the half-made quilt is going to be quilted as I go. I love the piecing and choosing fabrics and watching the design come together but the all over quilting is too boring for words.

I have also been hitting Paypal hard getting some silk to practice on. I have a few very small bits, and quite a collection of other fine fibres from buffalo down to camel and this is the reason for the featherweight.

Week after next our Library system will be unavailable while a system change is installed and I have decided to take it off, to have my car worked on, to play in the garden and play with fibre. I have been incredibly tired lately, frequently coming home from work and sleeping until the news comes on. I should be washing the kitchen floor but I'm not.

I learned a lesson this week. Don't mess with your meds. Since my hysterectomy 5 (?) years ago I have been using an estrogen only patch, mainly to prevent hot flashes which were a real trial. From everything I read it seemed like an estrogen only replacement caused few problems especially on those of us who can no longer get cervical or ovarian cancer. However, there have always been warnings about taking hormone replacements indefinitely. Occasionally I forget to replace my patch weekly and I haven't had any instant reaction when I've done that lately. Earlier, I would instantly get hot flashes if I was off a day. So this week I thought I'd go without a patch and see how things went.

Badly. I got more and more depressed as the week progressed to the point that I was having suicidal thoughts by the end of the week. I felt like the world was pressing down on me and I wanted to get out of this existance any way I could. I could see no reason for this sudden and deep depression especially as I was doing things that I usually enjoy, like planting out my garden, which is one of the high points of the year. I love digging and watching things grow. I have been stiff but not more so than I would expect from the level of activity I've been doing. Last night I didn't even feel like eating and when I lose my appetite, you know something's wrong. The depression was getting to a point I cannot describe in words. So today I put on a new estrogen patch. Suddenly I feel like myself again, not like there's a cold lead ball in the middle of my chest. I know mood swings are estrogen related but I didn't feel like I was swinging, more like I'd jumped off a cliff and couldn't wait to hit bottom.

So I'm back now. And hungry.

It's been a while I know. I have been particularly depressed lately and didn't feel like dishing it out to the world so I just kept my head down and went from day to day. Nothing terrible has happened; just one of those cycles when nothing feels fun or interesting and all I wantt to do is crawl into bed and sleep. I know this isn't healthy so I haven't, but I'm still not very cheery.

On Tues night J and the Bear and I went to a meeting at a local club about starting a Swans supporters chapter in Canberra. Apparently as long as the Kangaroos were supposedly taking root in Canberra (which they never accomplished and have now taken off for the Gold Coast), the Swans were not able to do anything official here. Now the situation has changed and they propose to set up a Canberra country membership which would entitle us to go to all the games they play in Canberra (2 regular season and some preseason) plus entry to a certain number of matches in Melbourne or Sydney. Sounds like a great idea altho I hope it's not at the club that this function was at because the food was awful. Depending on how the ongoing television rights battle goes we may be able to meet to watch matches together because our local TV network affiliate seems to think we aren't interested in Swans matches and therefore often doesn't air them which means you have to have cable to see them and there is some debate about where cable fits into the TV mix. The fixture for next year just came out and apparently the Weagles are not happy that the first game of the season is a rematch of the Grand Final but in Sydney's Telstra Stadium.

On the fibre front I have ordered 3 spindles and can't wait for their arrival. I mailed off today the samples on English Leicester for the breed swap. I started spinning the second bag of grey wool from the spotted sheep and discovered that the second bag is all very light grey while the first was mostly dark grey. Since they will be plied it should be interesting. I have knit some on the socks and some of the cardigan.

I am glad I didn't plant anymore that I did because we had frosts last week and the Bear covered the tomatoes I had planted. We ate our first peas last night. In attempting to uproot the dead apricot, whose roots are doing fine even if the branches are dead, I fell hard on my left side. For a while I thought I was going to have to lie there till the Bear came home because I was wearing some old jeans that were rather tight and I was having a horrible time trying to get my feet under me. Eventually I got one knee that hurt slightly less than the other one on the ground and used the Lemon verbena to pull myself up. I have lovely bruises and am quite stiff. Over the next few days I will plant beans and the rest of the crops. The Bear got a tiller attachment for our whipper-snipper and tilled a large weedy area for me which saves me a lot of effort.

WHHOOOPPEEE! I finally glued the hook onto my beginner's spindle, dug out some browny-grey BFL from the stash and taught myself to spindle spin just now. Thanks to Grafton Fiber's excellent instructions, by the way. I can see how this could be very addictive and I can't believe how fine you can spin this way. I have been wrestling mightily to try and get my wheel spinning finer and more consistent and I was spinning very finely on the spindle in literally 15 minutes. I went and showed the Bear and then said, "Now, I'll have to start collecting spindles," and he just laughed. I want to do a lot more of this and ply the results and then try fine fibres that I know I won't be able to control with the Roberta. Even with zero take-up tension and set at its slowest speed it would still grab fibre out of my hands. This spindle business is so easy I can't believe I thought it would be too hard for this klutz to handle.

There are so many creative people out there doing creative things that I could spend all day reading blogs, getting ideas and end up accomplishing zip. It means I push myself too hard when I do sit down to do something and get myself into trouble. Result: I waste an entire day sleeping to recover, or get a headache, or my hands get so sore I can't even hold a book. Thus, mea culpa for not posting a decent entry in a long time. I will try and make up.

First, on the knitting front I mentioned J's cardigan. So here is what I've knit so far. The pattern is from Vogue Easy Knits and it's a long cardigan with pockets and a seed stitch rib. Volcano is a wool & acrylic blend. The true colours can be seen best in the yarn ball and not in the actual knitted garment. I have finished the first of the red socks and ran out of wool just at the end of the toe so if I didn't have such large feet there would have been plenty of yarn. The tips of my toes will be solid red from leftovers.

After two days of record high temperatures for October, it is cool again. Yesterday I tempted fate by planting 5 tomato plants 2 weeks early. I also planted 2 rows of beans and did a lot of weeding. Had a big feed of fresh sminach and asparagus for dinner (with leftover Indian from Friday night). The peas have pods and some of the berries are blooming.

I am spinning again, hurrah! I was so set on finishing S's jumper which I haven't mailed yet (tomorrow) that I didn't allow myself to spin. I am now spinning the carded batts from the spotted sheep. This is the part that I could not separate into solid black or solid white but greys and blends of the two. Some of it has a bit of grease left in but not much. What I have in my mind's eye is a zip-front jacket of the grey (I have lots more of that than of either black or white) with one white and one black sleeve. I just washed, de-pilled, and mathballed my wear-around-the- house cardigan which is one of the first things I knit. It was knit out of Cleckheaton 8 ply Tapestry in a blue/green colourway they no longer make. I have worn it to death in the past 6 or so years and it deserves a rest. The other possibility for the everyday cardigan is Chris Bylsma's Saturday morning which is a loose, shirt-tailed cardigan which is designed to be knit of different wools and I could use various hand-spun in the stash: grey, almost black, tan, etc.

Book report: BBBB is Red Dust by Ma Jian. Although it was written 20 years ago, I find it fascinating for showing the side of China Westerners never see. He travels through areas of China that would hardly be called tourist destinations (especially the wandering through the desert for days without water). He is a man without papers, without authorization to be traveling where he is, who has no income besides what he can pick up along the way, whether it is giving free-lance haircuts or drawing illustrations. He crashes with fellow poets, sleeps on floors, or 5 to a bed with smelly feet. You see the parts of China that are as far removed from the bright lights of Shenzhen as you can get, to where peasants live in huts around a well with a few sheep. This is one reason I won't bother trying to travel to China (even if my health permitted me); because I don't want to see the China the authorities want you to see but the real China, disgusting tho it might be. Ma meets the "coil remover" who removes the IUDs inserted by the government to stop the birth rate climbing, as well as all the minority peoples that have been absorbed into Han China. It's a continually surprising read.

Nag, nag, nag. That's what my conscience does when I don't post. I have no really good reason for not doing so except that my hands hurt (actually many joints hurt) and we are having weather that really puts me on edge. It is approximately 34C and extremely windy and a day like today bring all the memories about Canberra's bushfires back. I can only hope there are no firebugs out there ready to take advantage of the conditions. Oh, and it hasn't rained in weeks. It is far too hot and windy to work in the garden. I had to urgently find my shorts in the stuff that had been packed away so my new wardrobe could be installed. The wardrobe is wonderful and I have oodles of space in it. I fancy I could even hide wool in it!

I have joined the breed swap on one of the spinners' lists so I spent yesterday while the wardrobe people were here putting 1 oz of English Leicester in each of 32 sandwich bags. I also emailed the lady from whom I bought the fleece to find out more about her sheep and who she sells wool to. I've decided not to sacrifice my perfectly spun yarn to the project but use an earlier batch for the 32 yds needed as spinning samples. In the process of looking for info on the breed I discovered that Australia used to have Cotswolds but they have died out and the first sheep here were Teeswaters. EL's are designated rare in Australi. I hope people don't get confused by our name for them as the are called English Leicesters to distinguish from Broder Leicesters and they are known as Leicester Longwool elsewhere.

Knitting: to the toe of the first red sock (got a lot done waiting 2 hours for the doctor) and finished the first ball of the back of J's cardigan. Spinning: the mottled grey from the spotted sheep, washed and carded by moi. Very long staple but sometimes it won't draft finely consistently. Mabe I can have a grey body and black and white sleeves. All woolen goods have been packed away with mothflakes.

Finally some real knitting content! This is S's Christmas jumper which will be off the the UK as soon as I get some books that I ordered. This was knit with Elann superwash wool. It had little undyed fibres that floated thu it and which sometime made a sort of halo over the surface of the wool. Not crazy about that feature but I'm sure an 8 year old doesn't care.

I have swatched for J's cardi but haven't compared the results to the pattern to see if I'm on gauge. The pattern is very weird in that the 2 needle sizes given for knitting are 3.25 and 3.75 but the swatch is knit on 3.5s. Do you have to be Vogue to understand this? I also picked up the latest Vogue knitting after several favourable reviews and I have to agree that there are several interesting things in it. Never mind the showstopping cover design (suitable to the Vogue model figure) which besides being cabled to death is knit in cashmere! You'd better be going some place cold in that or you'd be quite warm. I have turned the heel on the red socks and am powering through the foot.

Four more mesh bags of fleece are ready to wash. I have planted seeds for cucumbers, yellow squash and 4 types of rockmelon (cantalope) in the hope that maybe one of them will produce a melon. Last year we got ONE. It was very tasty but I expect better. We are still getting frosts at night so I can't do much more than cut asparagus every day and wait.

I missed this morning (between breakfast and 1PM) having to go back to bed. My legs were screaming last night and I slept poorly and was not very rested when I awoke. I went to the mall on Friday and then Saturday we went to the mall and the hardware megastore and my legs do not like that must walking/standing around you do when shopping. This state of events has not improved as I lost weight. My knees feel better but my legs show no improvement (so far, she says optimistically).
 

I have been very remiss in not blogging but it's been on of those weeks where I haven't had a spare moment with any energy to burn. It seems like the fatigue part of FMS claimed me. Every time I had a spare moment I was too knackered to do anything. Managing to keep up with the normal things of life took all my energy. My vision seems to be giving me problems as well. Kerataconus is theoretically solved by a cornea transplant (graft) and I have two of them. But I only see 20/20 under perfect conditions with good light. Throw in fancy graphics, small type, low contrast conditions and I am straining. Eventually this leads to headaches. Also I am extremely reliant on my gas-permeable contact lenses. A speck of dust, an eyelash, even blinking the wrong way and I am practically blind. I have finally gotten the Bear to admit I need help in housecleaning. I can't see the dirt, my hands aren't strong enough to scrub, I can't kneel and I get dizzy easily. I am thrilled to think about not fretting about my less than clean house.

I have not dyed, but I have finished S's jumper (photo to come). We are having warm days but still the threat of frost at night so I haven't planted my tender crops yet.

No, I have not been hiding myself in shame. Just been busy and didn't feel like revisiting the debacle that was the Grand Final. Full points to the Weagles because they played better than the Swans did and only their poor kicking didn't make the score higher. Having said that, our poor kicking lost us the game. The first half was a sad thing to watch, but I was certain that the boys would fight back. Well, they did, but too little too late so they lost by one lousy point. Had any of a number of players who had opportunities in the first half to kick goals managed to get the ball between the big sticks, the match would have gone our way. Many tried but few succeeded. IMHO, we were also feeling the lack of Paul Williams and Jared Crouch in the back line. The new guys did well, but Crouchy and Willo had so much more experience and I don't think would have let WCE's forwards through as much. It was a nice touch to let LRT (Lewis Roberts-Thompson) score a goal which will probably not be a normal occurrence but take your goals where you can. Now I can only hope that we regroup and go at it again. The media kept saying that winning back-to-back premiereships is extremely hard and I believe them now. Seeing my favourite umpire fall on his bum was an added bonus.

While I have been home I have dedicated myself to fibre pursuits. Today I took the noily hand-dyed Perendale roving and the noily Corriedale batts and made a large piece of felt. I followed the directions found here. It isn't as thick as I would have liked it. I had a lot of wool on the counter when I started, but not enough for the thickness I wanted. The most frustrating thing about felting is trying to guess how much any given item will shrink when felted. This shrunk very little in size and some of the fibres remained separate from the layers beneath them even tho they were laid cross-wise and vigorously messed with during the process. They felted, but didn't attach to the layer underneath. Once I decide what I'm going to do with the piece, I will have to address the need for possible stabilization so the pieces don't fall off. Tomorrow I dye.

I have finished knitting S's Christmas jumper and need to assemble it and knit the neckband in. Then start J's cardigan after finally getting in touch with her for her size.

I am tired of being tired, of always feeling that I'm lacking sleep, of wishing there were more hours in the day so I could do all the things my brain dream up for me to do but I don't have the energy to do. I had to take numerous breaks during the felting because I just couldn't stand up for the length of time needed for the task. The Bear and I both worked in the yard on Sunday and we both eventually just got pooped. (He's terribly out if shape because he doesn't get any exercise and the diabetes and asthma don't help) I got to a point where I was dizzy and couldn't hold the pruning shears any longer. I am still coughing (and not a dry tickly cough) from the flu I had in August. I'd take time off but I want to be able to accomplish something in the time I have, not sleep. But I do want to sleep as well. Somebody add another day to the week or a couple of more hours to the day so I can have a nap and still get things done. And we won't talk about housework that doesn't get done because I'm felting...

Pre Grand Final trivia to conquer the jitters.

Barry Hall has lucky underwear. (so do I)

Ben Matthews has a tattoo of a tiger guarding cubs on his side.

Brett Kirk is the most effective Buddhist midfielder in the AFL.

Michael O'Loughlin's partner gave birth to their first child the week he kicked his 400th goal.

Paul Roos met his American wife in a bar in San Diego.

I have been a fan of the Swans since I saw my first AFL match on ESPN in 1982. I had a team poster on the wall of my office in Ohio which inspired the girls and intimidated the boys. When the deputy Director General of the NLA visited me there on business we spent the time talking football and he seemed to be trying to sell me on the idea of living in Canberra.

I'm not going to write a lot today but give you some pretty piccies to look at. This is a very small bit of the Wisteria which covers the entrance to the backyard and the driveway. The smell is heavenly. I kept killing wisteria in Ohio as we were right on the border of its climate zone. Here it is rampant.


Here are the Cotton fun socks. Not very exciting; blue, grey and black but I don't wear wild socks every day.
Here is the photo of the red socks as promised. A slightly different take on self patterning from Jawolle. And I was utterly flabberghasted to find in the middle of the yarn sausage the little spool to the right with is reinforcing thread. Since the yarn is about 18% nylon already, I'm not certain it needs it but I'll give it a whirl when I make it to the heel. One of the podcasters I listen to said she was so over self patterning yarn. I am getting that way, because htey all make the same type of pattern. Regia Ringel makes stripes but other wise it's all fake fairisle and I'm getting a bit tired of it too. The glorious colourways that are available from places like Mountain colors or such cost too much for me. Monday is a public holiday and I am taking the following Tues off so I have until next Thurs to play. It's too early to do anything serious outside but weed so I intend dyeing, putting something throught the inkle loom and maybe carding some of the washed wool or start spinning something new. I have removed all the bits and pieces from bobbins and now have a lot of miscellaneous bits of wool.Felting too maybe

No prizes for guessing where we were on Friday night. Telstra Stadium watching my Swannies thrash "the purple people from the west" as they were described by some newpaper reporter. There were very few fans of the purple people in the 61,000 plus folks in attendance which I guess isn't surprising. The team came through the match with no injuries and all the forwards scored well, B Hall with 6 goals and R O'Keefe and M O'Loughlin with 4 a piece. They played very sloppy footy for the first half of the match before they got their act together, but never looked in doubt of winning. Now that West Coast beat Adelaide in the other match it will be a repeat of last year's Grand Final and I think we should be favourites to win the big one. My friend J and I decided that going to the Grand Final was just out of our reach financially. Not have a couple of thousand dollars lying around to spend in an ultimately frivolous manner. If it's like last year, the Grand Final crowd was heavily biased toward Sydney anyway.

I am still quite tired. All the walking we did both in going to the match and on Saturday in going into the city on the train to do some shopping really made my legs hurt. Don't know what I can do about it; I think it's a combo of FMS, chronic circulatory problems in my legs that have been bothering me for 30 years, and just not being used to walking so far on hard surfaces. Actually standing is worse than walking and you do a lot of standing while waiting for trains and/or shopping. Did cast on and knit on the new red/black & white wool/cotton socks. Photos to follow.

Today I picked up a package from Cabin Cove Mercantile (2 thumbs up for speed of service altho they enclosed a little sachet of lavender which ticked off Quarantine) containing some superwash fingering weight (read sock) merino yarn in a lovely subtle combinations of grey, and a case for my dpns. This was the first case I've seen that wasn't horribly expensive and it's pretty basic but in a flamboyant palm tree print. Which leads me to whine about dpns. I have tried other needles than bamboo and keep coming back to them. I got some sexy rosewood needles made in India which had nice sharp points. Then one broke; then the points developed little spurs that caught on the wool; then the second one broke. These are size 1's which is what I generally knit socks on. I won't try them again. Size 1's seem to be a problem to many folks. I don't even try Brittany Birches in 1's because they are so easily broken (or bent which is a bit weird). I also tried Pony Pearls and although they are plastic with a steel core, the tip of one broke off. So I guess it's Plymouth and Clover bamboos forever unless somebody has another option.


On the home front I worked in the garden on Sunday and got the berry bushes fertilized and mulched (no more pile of leaves in the driveway), weeded some, took the cat for a walk, disposed of the remains pruned from the pear tree. While I was out there I saw a new bird for our backyard, a spotted pardalote, or rather a pair. They are really tiny but since they were not twittering and in a flock like silvereyes I strained to pick out enough features so I could look them up in the book when back inside. While the photo definitely shows why they are called spotted, it doesn't show the reddish buff on the male's chin and under pants. When I came hers of cource every bird was a new bird, but now we are running out of new things for this area besides the invisible ones (those that you hear every time you go into the bush but don't often see). According to the web-site the photo came from, the pardalote is an altitudinal migrant, that is, it migrates up the mountains and down. We have seen them before at Tidbinbilla but not in our backyard. We also went to the hardware/garden store where I bought 4 new ivy-leaf geraniums (or pelargoniums if you want to be pedantic) to replace those that died over the winter, some herbs and some tomato plants. It is way too early for tomatoes but some I just buy when I see them and keep until it's safe to plant (early Nov.).

My readers might think that not a day goes by without a bit of fibre stuff arriving in the mail. Sometimes it feels that way. On Wednesday I got Colourful Knitwear Design from Amazon. It's a collection of articles from Threads, from when Threads still did more than sewing. Lots of wonderful Ideas and examples. One that used bits and pieces including embroidery floss and other "nontraditional" knitting fibre. I have still in the back of my head the plan to knit something from my boxes of surplus needlepoint yarn but haven't gotten around to designing it. It will be intarsia or stripes since there are limited seasons for heavy Fair Isle jumpers here.

I also got 400 gm of beige raw alpaca from an ebay source. I haven't spun alpaca yet but I am eager to try. That's one of the reasons I bought those combs in Bendigo. I was flipping through EZ's Knitting workshop last night to check to see if that's the one with the top down yoke sweater in it and it is. The lightbulb over my head went on this morning and I remembered I have some Jumbuck wool in the stash, plenty of white and smaller amounts of 2 shades of natural brown. I had't had a plan for it but now I do. Faux Scandinavian yoke sweater with brown on white. Hey, it's so dry here that if is snowed, the flakes might be brown. It occasionally rains mud.

Today my spindle from Carolina Homespun arrived. I am both excited and apprehensive about learning a new technique that involves co-ordination. Fingers crossed. I was watching The worst jobs in history on the ABC on Sunday and the only female work demonstrated was grinding grain, but there was a person in the background spinning on a spindle. If people have been doing for thousands of years, I should be able to, right?

We have our tickets to the Swans final next Friday (the 22) and motel booked near a train station. The Bear almost knocked my socks off by saying he would be willing to take public transport into the Sydney CBD on Saturday. Separate him from his car? Never happened before.

This image shows the culminating moment in the Swans one point victory over West Coast in Perth on Saturday night. Mick had just kicked the winning goal while running through the goal square and right up to the Weagles cheer squad where he, slightly pumped, let out his enthusiasm on them. Wonderful moment. Really gritty, hard fought match, which every match against WC is. But Roosy is playing head games again and saying he knows how to beat the Weagles at their own game, which one has to admit, we did despite several players being injured. Kirk was playing on a sprained ankle; our ruckman had a badly dislocated finger. But they strap 'em up and on they go. Supposedly the intensity of the match solidified the team into The Bloods mentality and when they are playing feeling like that they are hard to beat. So we have a home prelimininary (semi) final Friday week, unfortunately a night match at Telstra Stadium and I just read that the tickets are pricey but we still want to go.

I am pretending that yesterday was just another day because I still after five years cannot bear to think about that day without breaking down so I have to bury it a while longer.

I washed more fleece on the weekend and this time I pulled the tips of the locks open and washed the net bags in the laundry tub so I could see how dirty the water was and it came out beautifully clean. Little longer fibres in this batch. I was preparing more fleece to wash while watching TV last night and at one point looked down to see the Imp eating the other end of the bit of wool I was working on. Ick! Don't eat raw fleece, you stupid cat.

I was listening to Brenda Dayne on Cast-on today at work and she has an uncanny ability to choose music for her interludes that just grabs me. Twice now I have been forced to immediately track down the artist (at CDbaby) and buy the record. She seems to fall for the same bluesy, from the heart, singer/songwriters that tickle my musical fancy as well. My musical tastes are eclectic (I don't like opera or maudlin country) so we go from early Beatles to the latest Aussie rock to world music or the occasional new age-ish. My preferred genre is what I call power pop, altho the music literati have broken it down in to several overlapping and confusing sub-genres. On the other hand I worship at the altar of Eric Clapton and like to sing along to Billy Idol. Another reason I love my iPod is that it's all there whenever the need arises (assuming I've been organized enough to load it onto the iPod in the first place).

A week punctuated by lack of sleep and a chronic sore throat. I think I have found the cause of my lack of sleep and its name is The Senior Cat. While for the most part she sleeps next to me, she also wakes me up several times a night. Sometimes she walks around on my pillow and purrs at me. Sometimes she wants to go out (either a potty break or a snack) and then wants to come in again. Then she wants out for good around 5AM. These disruptions to my sleep cycle have been doing me in. I have kept her out for two nights and have had the first uninterrupted nights' sleep in weeks. Sleep is absolutely essential to FMS people and I was getting very tired of falling asleep while watching the news because I couldn't sleep at night. I have no cure for the sore throat. Watch this space.

In the mail this week has come the above sock yarn that screams to be knitted. It came from Simply Sock Yarn and accompanied some rather boring one colour Regia cotton. I am still knitting the second Cotton Fun sock so it will have to wait. I also got som thing called Dragon Waste from Mountain Shadow Ranch from their ebay store. $12US for 14 oz super wash wool mill ends. The colours range from red to aqua to black. There is plenty for several pairs of socks.

A box from Amazon arrived today with EZ's Knitting workshop which I just hadn't gotten around to buying. Also Knit it Now which I should have known by the fact that it was a Martingale publication is the same sweater knit in several different yarns (all expensive). Why don't I learn? There were 3 very positive reviews so I bought. Maybe it will prove me wrong. On the other hand No pattern knits by Pat Ashforth & Steve Plummer is the best modular book I've seen (and I've bought quite a few) because it goes beyond the novelty of knitting shapes and putting them together, although that is covered in detail. It's loaded with photos with lots of detail on every aspect of modular knitting and then goes into design with a whole chapter on colour and only a few patterns at the end. I feel more confident about what to do with bits and pieces in the stash. In fact I have a few things already put together in my mind.

I also bought a used copy of Hand spinning: art and technique by Allen Fannin. I know I have checked this book out of the Guild library but it just has so much stuff in it that paying $10 for a used copy I consider an investment in the reference library. It also covers handspindling which I shall be trying soon.

What is with books? Why can't I resist them? I have a bookcase next to my chair where I blog that contains my personal reading matter. I have a solid shelf of oversized chraft books, not just knitting but other fibre crafts such as needlepoint, quilting, dyeing, and weaving. I just did a weed-out of books bought in a fit of enthusiasm that I know I won't use and donated them to the library. Above that are 2 shelves of regular sized books (octavo to librarians) that are double shelved (two rows one behind the other,) the top one small mass market paperbacks, the lower hardcovers and trade paperback. These are all my "current reading" which ranges from science fiction to the history of the Spanish Armada. And I bought 2 new sci fi this weekend. When do I think I am going to read them? I read a review or stumble on something on Amazon or see a featured new novel in Dymocks and the plastic goes zing!

Just a brief post as I am off to the dentist. My article on the WWII socks project has been published in Fiber Femmes! The image quality ain't so hot but it's there!

We may have created a monster. The Imp, seen here with her current favourite toy, a gold twist-tie, was held down while all her nails were clipped, since we were both getting tired of being shredded in passing. Then we held her down and put the collar and leash on her and took her for a stroll in the back yard. She did nothing much except sniff things, eat grass (what is it with cats & grass?) and wander around. She wanted to visit the scrap of wasteland that is the corridor between our house and the one next door which is all of about 8' wide, I assume because that's what my bedroom window looks at. When she was gathering herself to jump over the fence, I picked her up and brought her back around to the main backyard. More wandering, sniffing, tasting things (do NOT eat ivy), having ants run up her legs but no excitement shown nor particular interest in anything. So she was eventually gathered up and brought inside. Whence began lurking at the backdoor and howling. For a long time. I never knew she could make such noise as it has been single yowls to this point. I think it's one of those cases of "I can't have it, so therefore I want it."

Today in the mail I got a box of Philosopher's Wool from the Neverending Yarn that I ordered when they were having a sale. I figure, I've got the book, I've got the wool so I should be able to produce one of their sweaters. No it's not the finest Shetland but when I calculated costs of buying wool to make a colourwork jumper it all came out to be more than I can afford. I got this for half price because it was odds and ends. I will spin some of the white wool in the stash sport weight once I figure out I can do this. If Knitpicks would only ship overseas...

Long time no post. Well, life (and work) go on. I am still recovering from the flu and the Bear has got it too but refuses to give in to it. I had to power-nag to get him to even take cold medication which he admitted did make him feel better. Men. Can't live with them, can't live without them (at least I can't). I have been serially monogamous for 36 years and I just like being married.

Book report: I finished Voyages of Delusion, which was my BBB. I found it all very educational because you aren't taught a lot about the finer detail of European exploration of northern North America. We all learn about the myth of the Northwest Passage but not the nitty-grityy of how it was un-discovered, which is what this book covers. It also goes into the detail of the political climate in Europe and some of the rationale behind these voyages. Here we meet "theoretical geographers", those who drew imaginary maps and then sent people out to find the lands they had drawn on the map. Such was the search for Terra Australis, which Cook debunked (someone had imagined there were 5 million people living on this theoretical continent!). So there are lots of maps showing a passage from Hudson Bay to the Pacific through imaginary lakes. Not only were the lakes imaginary but they mis-estimated the continent's width by 1000 miles and knew nothing about the Rocky Mountains. In all, very interesting. Not riveting but that's why it's a BBB.

S's Christmas jumper has the front finished and I am starting on the back. Knitting for children is fun because the project goes fast. I finished the first of my Meielenweit Cotton Fun socks and cast on the second. I use a technique for wide sock tops of casting on double the number of stitches needed and then knitting 2 together on the first row of ribbing. The Bear has diabetes and his socks must be loose. I am spinning some left over purple wool and trying for further fineness. I have won 2 ebay auctions, one for 50 gms of plucked white cashmere and one for some cream alpaca. The cashmere arrived yesterday and is lovely. The vendor apologized for some VM by giving me an extra 10 gms! Much longer staple than I expected from cashmere, but the ladies at the Bendigo show cashmere tent said short fibre is not a characteristic of Australian grown cashmere. This seems to prove it.

I've also become intrigued by spindles. I adore my Roberta but it can be tetchy about draw in and I have my concerns about spinning short fibres on it. I like the idea of the portability of a spindle and it's something I could take anywhere, like socks are. (BTW, I am reading Stephanie's Knitting Rules! and everything she says about sock knitting is true. Especially the addictive nature and the fact that sock knitters don't count sock wool as part of their stash. I went through the entire craft fair saying "there is sock yarn over there but I'm not looking") So today I took myself off (electronically) to Carolina Homespun and ordered a spindle, and while I was there, a book and a sample of bamboo.

I'm alive! That must have been some sort of flu because I was simply out of it for 9 days and I still am coughing a little now. The bad thing is I have given it to the Bear who is now coughing and spluttering like I was.

While I was sick, spring arrived. All our fruit trees except the pear are in bloom, the peas are up, there is about an inch of asparagus coming up, my Earlicheer narcissus are popping open and the rosellas are courting. The Imp and I both found the chirping and waggling of tail feathers by red birds with blue wings and tails quite entertaining. There is much weeding to do and I need to get the berry bushes up on their trellis but I thinks I will take activity a little slow today. Oh, and there is wattle in bloom everywhere. It's hard to describe how overwhelming all this yellow is. Entire hillsides turn golden, or lemon, depending on the species. And since there are so many species, when one stops blooming, another starts. We have 2 Cootamundra wattles in our front yard which were self seeders from somewhere. It can be considered a pest but I love the colour and when not in bloom it has sort of silvery grey fern-like leaves. They don't live long and the bigger of the two is already dying after 10 years.

I was listening to Cast On today at work wherein an old mill was visited, and I thought as the weaver described his tasks about a story on 60 Minutes last night about the gloom regarding the future of the petroleum-based economy. I had to think while I was listening that at least I knew enough about vegetable growing and textiles that we wouldn't go hungry or naked. I am glad I have a practical skill like knitting instead of whiz-bang computer graphics. And if we face cultural collapse due to a) running out of oil; b) global warming; or c) escalating ethnic violence, I hope by then I am on my farmlet with a whopping big garden, some sheep and goats and an ecologically sensible house with at least some solar power. All those years of reading Mother Earth News must count for something.

Round 21: The Swannies beat Brisbane soundly. We are sitting in 5th place on the ladder and on percentage are quite aways from the 6th. We play Carlton next week which is a pretty sure win. Adelaide plays Melbourne next week which could have interesting results for placings. Melbourne incredibly drew with Geelong; you would think in a sport where scores are over 100 points in many matches that a draw was unlikely but it's happened twice this season and there is no extra-time completion of the match.